Lessons Learned from Joining My City's Oldest Neighborhood Association
What comes to mind when you think of neighborhood associations? You may think of “NIMBYs” contesting proposed developments. Or you may associate them with homeowner associations, where neighbors discuss bylaws, fees, and please-don’t-park-on-the-street-lest-you-be-fined.
I don’t blame you. As the focus has shifted from discussing quality of life to enforcing bylaws, many have lost faith in the role of the humble neighborhood association.
Admittedly, I’ve felt the same. So have several members of the Strong Towns movement with whom I’ve conversed, seeking honest conversations about the state of their neighborhoods.
That all changed, however, when I joined the Southeast Denton Neighborhood Association (SEDNA)—the oldest neighborhood association in Denton, Texas—as a volunteer community health worker.
Attend a SEDNA meeting and you’ll find the usual signs of a neighborhood association: neighbors conversing as they file into their chairs, eating from plates of Chick-n-Minis, courtesy of the visiting police officer.
But observe the conversations that follow and you’ll discover the lessons everyone—residents, elected officials, and city staff alike—can learn to create and foster the kind of neighborhood associations that build strong towns.
Lesson #1: Neighborhoods Need Actual Neighborhood-Level Engagement
Communities across the United States follow a similar system to neighborhood engagement: invite residents to attend council meetings—and, if they’d like to speak to an agenda item, fill out a card and wait for the mayor to call their name.
This system checks all the boxes of successful neighborhood engagement, sure. But it dismisses the actual quality of life issues that neighbors want to discuss.
MLK Jr. Rec Center in Southeast Denton
That’s why, in the 1990s, a late Southeast Denton resident created SEDNA. And though its motives to organize runs deeper than inefficient neighborhood engagement (the city displaced many residents’ ancestors from their thriving black community in the 1920s to construct a public park), SEDNA demonstrates why strong towns need neighborhood-level engagement.
SEDNA meets the last Monday of every month. Not at the council chambers. Not at a trendy coffee shop downtown. Instead, the group meets at the MLK Jr. Rec Center in their neighborhood of Southeast Denton.
Makes sense, right? Consider where you feel most comfortable discussing your own issues. Can you imagine discussing your experiences with, for example, alcoholism, infidelity, or abuse at a coffee shop’s open mic, as strangers nod along just enough to appear as if they’re listening?
This is where the rec center—or wherever you and your neighbors collectively feel comfortable—shines. Sure, SEDNA hosts its meetings at the rec. But it’s also where residents exercise, take classes, and converse with neighbors as their children play basketball.
That familiarity ensures that residents feel comfortable expressing their issues with the neighborhood. Not in the formal, you-get-three-minutes-before-I-ring-this-bell way. But in a way that, as you’ll learn below, addresses the actual quality of life issues that neighbors want to discuss.
Lesson #2: Neighborhoods Need Cheap Talk
I first discovered the term “cheap talk” in Prabhjot Singh’s Dying and Living in the Neighborhood—the best book, in my opinion, on the future of health care.
Prabhjot describes “cheap talk,” a term often associated with Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom’s work, as “direct, informal communication where there [is] no immediate contractual or enforceable obligation between parties.”
In other words, conversations led by neighbors who have no ties to each other beyond neighborliness, and uninfluenced by top-down, specialist-led interventions.
Reflecting on your past experiences at council meetings, this concept may sound unusual. If residents speak to an agenda item regarding, for example, a proposed road widening in their neighborhood, you’d like the traffic engineer to share their expertise, right? Surely a brief, jargon-filled description of “level of service” and “vehicle miles traveled” would ease their concerns, yes?
In council chambers, residents must accept these responses. That’s because, per the council’s rules of order and procedure, council people and city staff have fulfilled their obligations. But have the responses truly tapped into the residents’ tensions? Fat chance.
SEDNA has mastered cheap talk and demonstrates it at every meeting. As opposed to administering a list of agenda items, the president—longtime neighbor, advocate, and friend to many in Southeast Denton—prompts an informal, open discussion regarding happenings in the neighborhood.
I’ve listened to residents speak passionately about drivers speeding through their neighborhood, men riding dirt bikes that awake their children throughout the night, and households selling drugs down the block. In the council chambers, how would experts address these concerns? Sympathetic nods? Promises to address them in future agenda items?
Again, this rule-based approach to neighborhood engagement dismisses the residents’ concerns. But worse: it shuts down testimonies that could inspire low-lift public investment to address the issue.
As these heated discussions have unfolded, I’ve witnessed a series of moments that will shift any city leaders’ perspective on public investment. These residents don’t want master plans, ribbon cuttings, or task forces. Instead, they want to know what actions city leaders can take today to address their concerns.
No grand scheme, just small, immediate action.
Cheap talk reveals our neighborhoods’ most pressing needs—and city leaders must make it their duty to listen and act on it.
Lesson #3: Neighborhoods Need City Leaders to Listen to (and Act on) Cheap Talk
Cheap talk on the neighborhood-level sets the stage for what, at Strong Towns, we call “the Strong Towns approach to public investment.” It looks like this:
Humbly observe where people in the community struggle.
Ask the question: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle?
Do that thing. Do it right now.
Repeat.
This approach makes sense. Why spend billions to construct a new rail line when residents just want to walk safely to the corner store? Why spend millions to update your centralized police station when residents need its police officers to heighten surveillance on a dangerous block? (The list goes on and on.)
SEDNA meeting
Scan the room at SEDNA meetings and you’ll see the council person that represents the neighborhood. You’ll see the police officers assigned to the neighborhood. You’ll see representatives from the city’s Department of Community Improvement Services.
Imagine how this mix shifts the conversation: a police officer responds to a neighbor’s concerns regarding a drug house, promises to check on it after the meeting; a representative from city staff responds to a neighbor’s inquiry about a vacant lot, updates the neighbor on proposed developments.
Suddenly, neighborhood engagement—and the public investment that it inspires—isn’t something you do to a neighborhood; instead, it’s something you do with the neighborhood.
Now, imagine what our neighborhoods would look like if we repeated this process in every neighborhood in the United States.
A Neighborhood Association in Every Neighborhood
Your neighborhood—and every neighborhood in the United States—has natural leaders. Think the pastor at your church or the imam at your mosque. Think the longtime small business owner. Think, like the SEDNA president, that resident relentlessly inviting their neighbors to dinner.
Can these leaders recite their neighborhood’s zoning code? Probably not. Can they quote the two thousand and whatever master plan? Unlikely.
But get them in a familiar space with familiar faces discussing familiar quality of life issues shared by the neighborhood, and you’ll discover that, collectively, they’re the experts in everything city leaders need to know to address the neighborhood’s most pressing issues.
If you’ve joined your neighborhood’s Nextdoor or Facebook group, you may dismiss the value of these conversations. I empathize: folk talk a lot of mess in these groups—I feel you.
But imagine a shift in the culture: a shift from sharing concerns in a vacuum, to face-to-face, honest conversations where city leaders by duty—not choice—listen and respond to concerns, giving feedback, as needed.
Will residents in select neighborhoods still complain about chirping birds, barking dogs, and, of course, parking? Likely. But, over time—especially in historically disinvested neighborhoods like Southeast Denton—city leaders will discover their constituents’ actual quality of life issues and the public investment to address them (a win for the city’s pocketbook, too).
And the best part: it doesn’t need master plans, ribbon cuttings, or task forces—just a willingness to humble themselves, listen to where residents struggle, and do the next smallest thing to address that struggle.
Just make sure they bring the Chick-n-Minis.
About the Author
Jacob Moses serves as Community Builder for Strong Towns. After graduating from the University of North Texas, he worked as a technical writer in Boulder, Colorado and, most recent, as a grocer in his neighborhood of Downtown Denton, Texas. Among the topics that Strong Towns covers, Jacob most believes in complete neighborhoods and encouraging his peers to, as he likes to phrase it, live on a neighborhood-level.
Have a question about joining the Strong Towns movement or how to get involved in our work? Please email Jacob.
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